Meaning in History?
Term:
Spring 2012
Subject Code:
GPHI
Course Number:
6664
Philosophers
have reflected on history in very different ways, and the purpose of this
course is to examine different approaches to the philosophy of history. We will
begin with Hegel’s classic lectures on history from the 1820s, and consider
this and other attempts (Kant, Marx) to find reason, meaning and direction in
the historical process. We then turn to the epistemology of history in the
debates about the Geisteswissenschaften in
the late 19th century (Dilthey and the NeoKantians). Some of these
issues reappear in the analytic philosophy of history in the 1950s and 60s
(Hempel, Dray, Collingwood). Then we turn to the more recent focus on narrative
(Danto, Hayden White) and memory (Paul Ricoeur). We conclude with the new
emphasis on experience and “presence” (Ankersmit, Runia). While the course
provides a kind of survey of the philosophy of history since Hegel, its real
purpose is to evaluate systematically the philosophical project of making sense
of history.
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